There are many off shoots of Buddhism, and they approach things slightly differently to each other but all come back to the Buddha's original teachings. You can always look at the original Pali cannon if you want to see the core teachings.
Look at Christianity, you have certain extreme groups who are condemning certain minorities with extreme hate. This wasn't what Jesus taught!
It's less extreme on Buddhism, but I've met Buddhists who don't seem to embody the Buddha's teachings.
It's a common misconception that the first noble truth means 'life is suffering'. It is obvious that life is not just suffering, it's a mixture of everything, joy and pain. A better translation would be 'In life there is suffering'. Which I'm sure everyone agrees with!
There are various stories about the dalai lama and other tibetan monks coming to the west and not being able to understand that lots of people in the audience 'hate' themselves. It's a concept they have struggled with a lot because it was not part of their life experience. I went to see a Tibetan lama who is close to the dalai lama. He said 'why would you hate yourselves, it doesn't make any sense?'.
He is right, what good does it do to give ourselves such a hard time. But then we can't separate ourselves from the society we live in. Things are still up to leave people dissatisfied, feeling they don't measure up, and mainly feel alone. The Tibetans have been through intense hardships and lost their country, but they had community and if got them through. I read one monk talking about being in these camps after losing their homeland and they were incredibly sad, but he said he never felt that people were 'depressed' in the way people in the west get. There's a huge difference between being sad and being depressed.
As someone said earlier, Buddhism is all about acceptance. We suffer because we want what we don't have and we don't want what we do have.
In the west now we have skimmed off one layer of Buddhism, mindfulness. We have used this to help people be less stressed...so they can continue to lead a busy stressful life! It will never work! Even Jon kabat Zinn has said that he regrets the way he introduced some of the Buddhist concepts to the west.
Being calm and still in meditation is one thing, but there is so much more to it. In Thailand generosity comes first, which makes a lot of sense to me. Look after others, serve your community, give something of yourself to make people happy. If everyone did this the world would be so different. But if everyone just meditates and continues to live in the same way things won't change.
I think Buddhism works perfectly with TMS treatment. I have had the most benefit from the heart practises : loving kindness, compassion, equanimity, sympathetic joy.
These practises focus a lot on forgiveness and learning to be kind to yourself. Something I imagine most of us TMSers need a lot of!
It's an interesting discussion
